John McCain: Bowing to the Religious Right and big corporations, just like Theodore Roosevelt

Hopefully this will be seen for what it is one day: extreme right-wing pablum.

Mr. McCain, who with his wife, Cindy, has an adopted daughter, said flatly that he opposed allowing gay couples to adopt. "I think that we've proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don't believe in gay adoption," he said.

I don't really care to make a joke here about McCain's own less-than-Rockwell-esque family and his choosing to cast stones here at other families anyway, his point is clear: he really just doesn't like gay people.

While his particular feelings on the subject don't do much to change policy since adoption is regulated at the state level, that doesn't mean there's nothing to see here. Compare this answer to what he said in the same NY Times interview about creationism vs. evolution:

But he declined to take a specific position when asked whether only evolution should be taught in public schools. "It's up to the school boards," he said. "That's why we have local control over education." Mr. McCain has said he believes in evolution.

It would have been easy for him to just say the same thing about gays and lesbians adopting - that it's up to the states, that's why we have state-level control over adoption - but of course he didn't.

Sure, it's a pander to get the Religious Right's vote, but that's not really all that important in the end. While I'm pretty sure that the only things that John McCain cares about are killing people and getting money for himself and his wealthy friends, the fact that he's ceding territory here to the Religious Right shows us exactly how his administration would act on LGBT issues.

The discrepancy with creationism/evolution is probably because that issue currently is viewed as something only the craziest nuts on the right disagree with and he's trying to get some centrist votes.

But it's a mistake to think that he's merely pandering to the Religious Right. The Times' title to the interview was, I kid you not:

McCain's Conservative Model? Roosevelt (Theodore, That Is)

The super-narrative is changing. McCain knows that he can't credibly sell himself as the next Ronald Reagan - that image has been to idealized among the right to even be something that Reagan himself could live up to. And he's not going to sell himself as the next Bush since everyone hates him. (The Times also suggests that he could have made himself the next Goldwater, but considering that McCain's on the tail-end of the Religious Right's backlash that killed off the Goldwater Republicans, he probably would like to avoid that. He's also no Barry Goldwater.)

Obviously he's still clinging to the maverick image by his fingernails, no matter how much reality betrays that narrative. TR was a maverick, TR isn't remembered in all that much detail, but TR made it to Mt. Rushmore. That's pretty much all that McCain needs, right?

He still has to prove himself as a true conservative to those on the far right, and we really can't expect the Republican nominee for president to buck his base (that's something Democrats are expected to do, not Republicans). So he's found a model for conservatism that, if translated into today's context, would be more like a mainstream Democrat's politics.

But the Times ate it up, and I'm sure that this coming week the other media will as well. He gets the conservative cred and the buck-the-party maverick cred, but he doesn't actually have to be a maverick. He can fall in line with the party on it's core moral values issues, disagree with them on non-issues (like the president's approval of creationism in schools), all the while making himself seem like a maverick in the mold of TR.

Whether it works or not in the end is another story. But the tired CW at this point is that McCain is a maverick, so his feeding the narrative with a pretty bad example and then it getting plastered across the top of this article isn't a surprise.

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Odd that he should choose the YOUNGEST man to hold presidential office ever who came to it after the assassination of McKinley. It should be remembered that TR was the first president to use executive power to subvert Congress. When Congress did not agree with him in foreign policy he simply created an "executive agreement" with the foreign potentate. Under his stewardship American Imperialism began in the wake of the Spanish American War with our defeat of Spain came our overseas "colonies" of the Philippines and Cuba, with (if memory serves) the Spanish port of the time in China.

TR got good press. He actually was first to break up Trusts, but his successor Taft broke up five times the number he did.

He later fomented revolution in Columbia to wrest what became Panama from her control to build the canal under his terms. He did propose the American Parks system to Congress which explains Mt Rushmore. All of this was great stuff for the yellow journalists of the day and Roosevelt was trumpeted for his accomplishments of taking from the weak of the world and keeping it, and modern America was born for both better and worse. I am glad McCain has chosen TR. Bully!

Roosevelt did form the Bull Moose party after serving out the remainder of McKinley's term and filling one four year term. He promised not to run for a second term under his own steam which he could have won. The Bull Moose party was four years later when Roosevelt could not wrest the nomination from his hand picked successor Taft.